As he crossed Canal street, walking in slow meditation homeward at the hour of dusk, a tall man standing against a wall, tin cup in hand,--a full-fledged mendicant of the steam-boiler explosion, tin-proclamation type,--asked his alms. He passed by, but faltered, stopped, let his hand down into his pocket, and looked around to see if his pernicious example was observed. None saw him. He felt--he saw himself--a drivelling sentimentalist. But weak, and dazed, sore wounded of the archers, he turned and dropped a dime into the beggar's cup. Richling was too restless with the joy of relief to sit or stand. He trumped up an errand around the corner, and hardly got back before he contrived another. He went out to the bakery for some crackers--fresh baked--for Mary; listened to a long story across the baker's counter, and when he got back to his door found he had left the crackers at the bakery. He went back for them and returned, the blood about his heart still running and leaping and praising God. "The sun at midnight!" he exclaimed, knitting Mary's hands in his. "You're very tired. Go to bed. Me? I can't yet. I'm too restless." He spent more than an hour chatting with Mrs. Riley, and had never found her so "nice" a person before; so easy comes human fellowship when we have had a stroke of fortune. When he went again to his room there was Mary kneeling by the bedside, with her head slipped under the snowy mosquito net, all in fine linen, white as the moonlight, frilled and broidered, a remnant of her wedding glory gleaming through the long, heavy wefts of her unbound hair. "Why, Mary"-- There was no answer. "Mary?" he said again, laying his hand upon her head. The head was slowly lifted. She smiled an infant's smile, and dropped her cheek again upon the bedside. She had fallen asleep at the foot of the Throne. At that same hour, in an upper chamber of a large, distant house, there knelt another form, with bared, bowed head, but in the garb in which it had come in from the street. Praying? This white thing overtaken by sleep here was not more silent. Yet--yes, praying. But, all the while, the prayer kept running to a little tune, and the words repeating themselves again and again; "Oh, don't you remember sweet Alice--with hair so brown--so brown--so brown? Sweet Alice, with hair so brown?" And God bent his ear and listened. CHAPTER XXII. BORROWER TURNED LENDER. It was only a day or two later that the Richlings, one afternoon, having been out for a sunset walk, were just reaching Mrs. Riley's door-step again, when they were aware of a young man approaching from the opposite direction with the intention of accosting them. They brought their conversation to a murmurous close.